Posted on 03/20/2011 6:47:46 AM PDT by ml/nj
Just wondering what people might have to say about this.
Both would say they tried to preserve their union. Both employed military might to do so and killed lots of their own citizens.
ML/NJ
Nice try, bosco. It’s your pal Little Pharma who is doing the judging, I am simply asking him if his judgement extends to Washington and Jefferson.
Maybe you can explain how or why Washington and Jefferson are exempt, if they are.
“OTOH, I suspect God has given his judgment on those gentlemen. “
As in the Epistle to Philemon? What was the advice there concerning Onesimus?
He didn't have him over for Christmas punch in 1865. Nascent abolitionist sentiment was fairly widespread in the South by 1860. Not dominant, not nearly a plurality, but the snowball had begun to roll down the hill.
The real unasked question in all this is where did antislavery sentiment come from? The answer was British social Christianity, the origin of Methodism, the Salvation Army, temperance and abolitionism. The British sent warships to disrupt the slave trade out of religous sentiment, not for imperial or commercial gain. That slavery was immoral, "wrong", had never been so strongly espoused or defended as in Victorian England and New England.
Your question reminds me of the same logic used by the left-wing when they continually asked: if we attacked Saddam Hussein then why not every other dictatorship? Why not Saudia Arabia? etc...
As long as you make an argument for some similarity that you percieve then you will just argue the point until exhuastion in order to not be wrong.
Lincoln was elected and was sworn an oath to protect the United States Constitution from ALL enemies both foreign and domestic.
The Confederates were determined to defy the Constitution and disregard it. They also attacked the United States forces as well.
It is amazing that some on FR here continue to want to argue for the unilateral right to secession. Yet they have done nothing to try rto have the Constitution amended to say such in all of this time. Instead they just rebel rause such as this thread does.
“It is amazing that some on FR here continue to want to argue for the unilateral right to secession. Yet they have done nothing to try rto have the Constitution amended to say such in all of this time. Instead they just rebel rause such as this thread does.”
Just to add to this statement above:
There are some groups who are trying to do something in order to achieve the right to secession today and the recent past and guess what?
The majority of them are either Progressives (with a tinge of libertariansism) or all out Marxists.
Coincidence?
I've never seen this asserted before. Do you have a reference? I don't even see when they might have had an opportunity to own slaves.
ML/NJ
Well, that's unarguable since Clay died in the early '50s. But as you state, the South was not united in favor of slavery by any means. It was the large land owners who owned slaves, and they had the greatest political clout.
But, the anti-slavery sentiment was growing in Europe as well as the North by 1860. And, as you state, even in the South. In fact, it was the predominant reason England, and to a lesser extent France, declined to recognize the Confederacy, even though it meant a blow to their textile industry during the war.
"The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (or Resolves) were political statements drafted in 1798 and 1799, in which the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures resolved not to abide by Alien and Sedition Acts. They argued that the Acts were unconstitutional and therefore void, and in doing so, they argued for states' rights and strict constructionism of the Constitution. They were written secretly by Vice President Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, respectively.
The principles behind the resolutions became known as the "Principles of '98". Adherents argue that the individual states can judge the constitutionality of central government laws and decrees, and can refuse to enforce laws deemed unconstitutional. Such refusal was called nullification in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1799, while the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 refer to "interposition" to express the idea of the states’ right to "interpose" between the federal government and the people of the state."
"Jefferson would have been appalled at the path his political party took from the Confederate democrats up to their transistion into becoming the Progressive demcorats."
I'm sure that most southern Democrats prior to 1963 would be appalled by today's modern progressive Democrats, whose political philosophy derives from the old northeastern Republican progressives dating back at least to Teddy Roosevelt in 1912:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1912)
You mean, like Aristotle?
ML/NJ
Disagreeing with the Constitutionality of a certain law is not equivelent to agreeing with unilateral secession by a ruling party or class in any given state.
And as far as your next statement, the Confederates formed the People’s party directly after the Civil War which competed with the Progressives at first but then merged with it. Wilson the first democrat President after the Civil war filled much of cabinet with Confederate democrats as well as gave resurgence and support to their terrorist group, the KKK.
The Confederacy, the Progressive movement, the People’s party, the KKK, were ALL democrat created and run. Thoughof course just as today we see republicans who are RINOs and support Progressives the same existed back then as well.
One had whiskers, the other a beard.
You see, the biggest problem that this Yankee has with Lincoln is that he destroyed the government left to us by Jefferson and Madison. In fact I never really understood what a slimeball Lincoln was because the Civil War era wasn't of much interest to me until I sought to learn how it all fell apart. James McPherson quotes a Harvard professor writing in 1869 as saying, "It is as if I am no longer living in the country of my birth." (may not be a precise quote as I am doing this from memory) This was a guy whose life was essentially untouched by the war, or so one would have thought. What ever do you think this professor had in mind?
ML/NJ
Just to elaborate onn your first point abit more.
Nullification of a federal law, or the creation of a Constitutional crisis, is a legitimate recourse. Yet the Confederates had no regard for the COnstitution at all and through secession deemed to remove a state(s) from under it’s law completely without any recourse unnder the rule of law.
I fully support a state being able to challenge the Constitutionality of federal acts or laws but I do not at all support the ridiculous notion of ‘unilateral secession’ as being some sort of right.
Why not allow individuals to claim unilateral secession then as well? A person could just decide that there land is no longer under the juridiction of the laws of the United States and our Constitution.
It is ridiculous to me that there is anyone here at FR supporting such a notion.
See my post at #112 about "defending" the Constitution.
About the Confederates attacking the North see #70. The Southerners had no designs upon the Northern States and it is a gross misrepresentation to suggest otherwise.
ML/NJ
I see it completely the opposite way.
I believe it is the Confederate democrats who have destroyed the Consitution they fought to secede from back then. If they loved the Constitution formed by the Founders so much then why did they just want to pronounce that it wasn’t their Constitution anymore and fight for that right? Why not work towards using the process provided by the Founders to uplift this nation? Instead they chose to rebel and fight a Civil war. They never stopped rebelling either after the Civil war and just went on to new tactics as the Progressive democrats.
I see Lincoln as having to fight a war in order to try and preserve the great government created by our Founders.
I see the Confederate democrats as traitors who sought to undermine the great Founding of this nation.
Yet the Confederates did attack United States forces. Their designs were clear in that they were determined to disregard the Constitution and hold any United States citizen in their state enslaved.
The Confederates were trying to seceded from the Constitution unilaterally without any regard for the rule of law. They also fired upon U.S. forces.
You might. But you would not be correct.
Several years ago when I sat in on a three hour Politics of the Civil War class (Great Class!) at an Ivy, I made the statement during the discussion that I have made here: that Lincoln destroyed the government bequeathed to us by Jefferson and Madison. The professor mostly let it go during the class. But during a private 20 minute discussion afterward he confided that he could not write the things I was saying during the class and remain part of the Civil War Academic Community. About Lincoln destroying the government, his comment was, "We, he had help." We agreed that maybe Wilson and FDR did help a little, but that both probably took their cues from Lincoln.
ML/NJ
>>Immoral is pretty self expanatory. In ths case, people who believe other people are sub-human and can be OWNED to be robbed of their sweat and talent.<<
Yes, life was tough in those times. Are you aware that many slaves went back to the plantation after the war to work for the very same man who once “owned” them?
I know that you are aware that historians say that most African-Iraqis arrived as slaves from East Africa as part of the Arab slave trade starting about 1400 years ago.
Slavery was not started by Confederates, no, the wonderful Middle Eastern Muslims take that honor.
You must be quite the man determining what was moral and what was not. Do close friends call you Little Jesus?
Don't get your hopes up.
“The Confederacy, the Progressive movement, the People’s party, the KKK, were ALL democrat created and run.”
The Progressive Party, aka known as the Bull Moose Party, formed out of a split within the GOP in 1912 and ran Teddy Roosevelt as its candidate. It ran against both Democrat Woodrow Wilson and Republican William Howard Taft.
‘The Civil War in the United States’ is a collection of contemporaneous essays by a couple of English journalists, one Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. They certainly thought that the Civil War was a progressive affair, the progressive side being Lincoln and the Union against the reactionary conservatives of the south. I have a copy but I believe the entire book can be found on the internet for those interested in the history of “progressive” political theory.
“Wilson the first democrat President after the Civil war filled much of cabinet with Confederate democrats”
I’d be curious to learn who these Confederate Democrats were who you think filled Wilson’s cabinet.
McAdoo of New York at Treasury? McReynolds of New York, attorney general? Lindley M. Garrison, New Jersey, at the War Dept? Wilson of Pennsylvania at Labor? Surely there must have been someone who flew the Stars and Bars, so help us find him!
And worse, you mean poor old Grover Cleveland, with his two non-consecutive terms as President, doesn’t count? Cleveland, elected in both 1884 and 1892, was a ‘Bourbon Democrat’, which was about as far from a progressive as you can get.
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